She pushed at it, sliding through the gap as soon as it was wide enough. A hiss escaped her as she scraped the skin off her side on the way. Then she was through, almost falling onto the floor in the unit. Scrambling to her feet, she launched herself toward the tank suit at the back.
Reaching it, she slapped her hand on the quick-release plate in the center of the chest. It registered her print and unfolded with a hiss of hydraulics. Not wasting a second, she hauled herself up and into the cockpit with practiced grace.
Sliding into place, she started powering up the suit even as it closed around her.
“Armored suit series three-zero-seven online. Calibrating for operator… lower limb obstruction present. Please advise.”
“Shit!”
She shoved at the closing panels to hold them open while she leaned down. Pulling the dagger from the sheath on her tac rig, she cut her pant leg off and ripped the exoskeleton free. It clattered to the deck in front of the suit as the panels closed.
“Obstruction removed. Recalibrate and align with neural implants,” she ordered, checking the power levels and bringing the weapons systems online.
“Calibrating… neural implants location, aligning to operator nervous system… warning, nervous system damage detected. Warning. Operating this unit may cause further damage.”
“Fucking bullets will cause further damage!” she hissed, punching buttons. “Override. Initiate link anyway.”
“Link initiated…. Confirmed. Engage upper torso systems?”
Her lower body was locked into place, and the breath escaped her lungs as she felt the familiar prickle of the suit interfacing with her neural implants. Making sure her harness was secured, she slipped her arms into the arms of the suit. The clamps wrapped around her arms just above the elbow and over her wrists. She reached out and took hold of the controls.
“Engage upper torso systems now,” she confirmed. “Close unit and armor up. Going weapons hot.”
The last panel slid into place over her head, covering her face, her heads up display flickering to life on her side of the transparent panel. Pushing the unit into motion, she strode across to the door, her metal “feet” clunking on the deck.
She rolled her shoulders and arms, making the guns on her shoulders—both machine and plasma—turn on their mounting to ensure she had full firing arcs.
“Confirm weapons hot,” the suit replied. “Targeting systems active.”
She nodded, bringing her current ammunition levels up to display in the corner of her screen. Not one hundred percent, but she wouldn’t need it for this. They had to get to the docking arm.
Her lips compressed as she reached the door, ducking down to step out into the corridor. The air was alive with bullets and energy bolts, both pinging off her armor as she turned to see Zero and Sparky pinned in place at the end of the corridor.
“Computer, acquire enemy targets,” she ordered calmly, waiting the fraction of a second for the computer to lock on. Then she rolled her shoulders again and bellowed.
“Take cover!”
6
Zero had been in combat as long as he could remember.
Sure, his memory only stretched back as far as T’Raal digging him out of the wreckage of that shuttle in the ass-end of beyond, severely wounded. Even without any memory of what had gone before, his body told the tale of a lifetime of violence. Scars... Evidence of repaired damage in his physical and cybernetic systems. Unit tattoos that didn’t match anything on record in any known galaxy or species military.
In other words, he’d been a soldier all his life. Somewhere. And since then, he’d fought with the Warborne against some of the most dangerous and brutal enemies out there.
But he couldn’t remember any of them being quite so determined and tenacious as the humans firing on them right now. It was all he and Sparky could do to stop their opponents overrunning their position at the end of the corridor to buy Eris the time she needed.
But where the fuck was she?
He didn’t have time or chance to look over his shoulder the way she’d run. She had a plan. He had to trust that. She wouldn’t have cut and run, leaving them here to die… No, she wouldn’t have. She wasn’t built that way.
He might not have known her for long, and he might not know her as well as he wanted just yet, but he knew her. Knew the kind of person she was. Like him, she was a soldier through and through.
Which meant she wasn’t the kind of person to leave her comrades to die.
“Will you lot just fucking fuck off and fucking die?” Sparky bellowed as he and Zero fired in concert, laying down a lethal net of suppressive fire. But despite it, despite their combined training and experience, the black-armored humans were creeping closer. It was only a matter of time.
Odd noises sounded behind them—whirring and heavy clunking that sounded like footsteps. If there were eight feet instead of two, he could almost imagine a drakeen approaching to back them up. Gods, what he’d do for one of the heavy-duty combat bots right about now. It would easily cut a swathe through the humans in front of them, and they could use it as cover when they moved forward.
“Take cover!”
The voice was mechanized, female, and came from behind them. Zero and Sparky both hit cover at the same time, heads ducked as the air around them filled with bullets and energy fire the like of which he’d never seen before.
“What the fuck?” he murmured, turning just as Sparky whooped.
“Fuck me! She’s a tanker!”
His jaw dropped as he turned. A behemoth of a machine walked toward them, guns on its shoulders recoiling in their rails as it fired mechanically, cutting down the humans trying to kill them. His thoughts of a drakeen hadn’t been too far off the mark. Bipedal, it was a hulking brute and heavily armored. Bullets from the humans pinged off it in showers of sparks. He could just see Eris’s face through a screen on the thing’s
